“I Would Not Be Moving”: A Woman Lives in an Abandoned Church as Its Founder Seeks the Land Back

• A partly built church at Guanapo, Trinidad, has stood abandoned for about 12 years
• A community leader says she has occupied it to keep squatters away
• She says Rev Juliana Pena returned and served an eviction notice
• She wants $150,000 to turn the shell into homes for former residents

A half-finished church in the hills of Guanapo, near Arima in Trinidad, has become the centre of a fresh dispute over land, the Trinidad Guardian reported in March 2024. Kathleen Washington, 52, interim president of the Guanapo Community and Environmental Development Organisation, has been living in part of the structure and says the Rev Juliana Pena, who led the church, now wants the property back.

The Light House of Our Lord Jesus Christ church sits on a site of more than 15,500 square metres. The land had been agricultural, leased in 1976 to Annette Williams. That lease was ended on September 30, 2005, when the Cabinet granted an institutional lease to Pena’s church. Pena was known as a spiritual adviser to the late prime minister Patrick Manning. Construction began in 2010 but stopped days before the general election that May, and the building has stood unfinished since. The Director of Public Prosecutions cleared Manning and Pena of criminal misconduct over the project in 2013.

Washington said she took occupancy in 2012 to stop squatters moving in, and that the shell has since served as an emergency relief centre and a venue for workshops, meetings and parties. After losing two businesses in 2018, she began using it for storage and now lives in a tarped-off section. The Guardian described a vandalised building surrounded by tall grass, with signs of a recent fire. Some residents told the paper the site had attracted too many squatters.

Washington said Pena visited her twice late in 2023, first saying God had sent her to complete the church, then serving an eviction notice telling them to leave immediately. Washington wants to spend about $150,000 on roofing and labour to convert the building into homes for people who once lived there. “I have been occupying it with good intentions,” she said. “I would not be moving until I have something concrete from the State.” The article did not include a response from Pena.

Jamaica knows this pattern: land handed to a church, a project that stalls and a site that ends up occupied. The Guanapo case shows how a stalled church building can drift into a housing dispute when the lease holder is absent for years. For Jamaican congregations holding land on lease or on trust, the lesson is to build, use or formally hand back the land, because an empty site rarely stays empty.